Frank Luntz Stops Himself Mid-Thought During CNN Throwdown When He Says Voters Are ‘Tired’ of Shows with ‘Yelling’

Republican pollster and focus group guru Frank Luntz urged a heated CNN panel to dial down the rhetoric and stopped himself mid-thought upon realizing he was criticizing the show’s format.

Luntz appeared on Wednesday’s CNN NewsNight , which, early in the summer underwent an overhaul. Previously, host Abby Phillip would interview several guests one-on-one and feature the occasional panel. It was essentially standard CNN fare, but the network decided to turn the entire hour into a sort of Crossfire reboot, but with more people.

Predictably, Democratic and Republican panelists have clashed on a variety of topics. Wednesday’s installment delivered one of the more tense exchanges in the show’s history. At issue was a now-deleted tweet by Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) that referenced the false rumor that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are eating pets:

Lol. These Haitians are wild. Eating pets, vudu [sic], nastiest country in the western hemisphere, cults, slapstick gangsters… but damned if they don’t feel all sophisticated now, filing charges against our President and VP.

All these thugs better get their mind right and their ass out of our country before January 20th.

The lawmaker deleted the tweet after being confronted by colleagues on both sides of the aisle, but an unrepentant Higgins later told CNN his post was “true.”

Appearing on CNN NewsNight , Trump 2024 campaign adviser Bryan Lanza dodged the issue of Higgins’ tweet and instead criticized alleged “fraud” in the Temporary Protected Status program under which the aforementioned Haitians are legally in the country.

“We think that immigration’s an issue that the voters in Ohio and these others feel displaced by the status,” Lanza said. “And we’re just not gonna use the language that the media wants us to use. We’re gonna bring up these issues time over time because immigration is a key issue to our constituency, a key issue to the American people. It may not be a comfortable conversation how everybody wants to hold it, but we’re holding it in a way that clearly works with the American people because they hold more confidence in Donald Trump.”

Lanza’s comments irked former Republican communications director Tara Setmayer .

“You’re conflating two different issues,” she said. “Why is it always the people of color, though? How come no one’s upset about people who are coming from other countries where there’s, you know, fraud in the same program, but it’s always the people of color? It’s the Haitians, or it’s the people who come from the s-hole countries . There’s a pattern here.”

Former RNC National spokesperson Madison Gesiotti interjected to say, “There are Republicans across the country who are actually thoughtful on these policies and are very worried about them as a whole, not just about Haitians. But they’re worried about immigration policy.”

Setmayer interrupted, which led to heated crosstalk. Phillip interjected to get Luntz’s take. He said:

LUNTZ: This is a problem. I understand that you’re angry. I feel it.

SETMAYER: Yes, because people like me are the ones that are being persecuted.

LUNTZ: Yes, but you– this behavior that we’re doing here, this yelling over each other, is not what the voters wanna see. They’re tired of the yelling, of shows. I’m sorry, because I don’t wanna get myself kicked off here. They’re tired of the yelling and they want solutions. The number one priority as a result. Now, looking back, looking ahead. And they say the same thing about other conflicts. They don’t want to know who did it. They want to know how you’re going to fix it. Stop trying to blame people and start fixing it, start getting it done now. And that’s not what we’ve been talking about here.

PHILLIP: Well, yeah. We could certainly be talking about a lot of really important policy issues, but instead, we’re talking about false rumors of Haitians doing voodoo–

LUNTZ: Which is fair.

PHILLIP: –eating cats and dogs. That’s not our fault.

Watch above via CNN.